Don Hahn Interview
*Disclosure: I received an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the coverage of several press events for Disney. All opinions are 100% my own.
The Don Hahn Interview was amazing, and truly an honor to sit with someone who is as talented as he is. He was very open about everything we asked him, and very easy to talk to. It was like sitting down talking to an old friend.
First Film in High school
That I did in high school? Oh my god! I don’t know if it even had a name. We did, um, in junior high, we, we, we did a stunt motion film where we’d each jump off the ground and take a frame when we were up in the air and then when you played it back, it looked like we were floating three feet off the ground, like down the hallways and things. That was the very first animated film I worked on.
But then he went on to tell us about being a music major and an art minor and he went to Cal State Northridge. While there he played in the band and got a summer job at Disney and never left. So someday I’ll probably get a call from Cal State Northridge to come back and finish, but that’s where I started out.
Most Challenging Thing About Producing Maleficent
Pulling all of the pieces together and a lot of it is just calendar work, , as simple as that sounds. But once we had all the elements together in the script they wanted to make the project, we had four months to prepare and to build a whole world. A lot of the credit for that goes with our director Robert Stromberg who had production designed, Avatar and the Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. So he’s a amazing world builder.
They only had Angelina three months which made it a very tight fit to get everything in the time frame, re-invent the story and then make sure you have the shot. It only took them 85 days to shoot, but a year and a half of special effects. Because most of the entire on screen world was created with back paintings and computer graphics!
The Perfect Maleficent
Angelina was always their choice for Maleficent and for her playing a Disney character just seemed to fit. When Angelina’s people were approached about doing Sleeping Beauty but from Malefiecent’s point of view, the agreed it would be perfect.
Love Conquers All is bigger than just a phrase in this film because a godmother character and a childlike character, like Aurora and Maleficent were matched perfectly and Angelina she fearlessly attacked all those things and did a great job with it.
Was it always the plan to use Angelina’s daughter as the baby for Aurora?
Don Hahn: “No, that was out of necessity because when we brought in little girls and dressed them up like little Aurora, um, they would come up to this amazing actress and scream and run away. Or get picked up by Angie and just you know not doing anything? And there’s so much genuine love and attachment in that scene where she just walks right up to her and goes, “Up” and you know and, like I have a little girl and, and you just know what that feels like. So there’s a real genuine moment in that scene.
And, and when you see the costumes, they’re upstairs here. When you go up there and see them, it’ss formidable. You know she’s a big lady to begin with, plus the horns and all that stuff. So, that was the real reason is to get a scene that played, more as reality. We had to use Vivienne.
Maleficent’s Wings
Maleficent’s Wings were 100% special effects, but the horns were actually magnetic so if she caught her head on something by accident they would break off. Then the wings were animated to go along with the story which made for an amazing movie.
Don Hahn has produced lots of great movies through the years Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and of course Maleficient to name a few. He is also the producer on DisneyNature Films. He told us those were hard to do because you have to just let it happen. You can’t intercede and you have to just let it happen. Sometimes, life is a lot like that and meeting Don Hahn was something I will never forget!
*Disclosure: I received an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the coverage of several press events for Disney. All opinions are 100% my own.
Leave a Reply